Today in his column, Frank Santoro follows up on his recent trip to Colombia by spotlighting a South American cartoonist named Berliac and his graphic novel, Playground:

This is a comic about John Cassavetes. It strikes a chord with me because it is very similar to another favorite comic of mine that is also about Cassavetes: John Pham’s Substitute Life: My John Cassavetes and Chris Ware diary from a 2002 sketchbook zine. Both use the comics form to study the process and output of the great film director. They also critique the dominant forms of comics and the comics industry by using Cassavetes’ struggles with Hollywood as an example and metaphor. The authors’ own reactions to Cassavetes and their notes about these reactions/thoughts are used within the comic book narrative to tell Cassavetes’ story—and the authors’ projection that they are living and participating in their own Cassavetes movie.

Does it ever feel like you’re in a movie? That odd sense of constant performance, and constant dislocation, is exactly what this comic trades in. Throughout J.1137 a “voice-over” of sorts continues over all its parts and frames, an ongoing string of not-quite-narrative caption, muddling its many layers.

For example: the title character (“J” for short) is an actor—and an android, believable and animated as an imitation of life. He’s in a movie currently in production, and is famous for roles in others—we even spot a billboard for one, though we never learn any titles. Through all this the comic acquires a rounded sense of a world with more layers to it than a fancy cake, most of its parts smoothed together with equalizing assurances of their shared falseness. That voice-over stitching this all together acts as the prime catalyst; even after the word “Cut” it continues, seeming to shift between characters, roles, and sources. At times it even appears omniscient.

—Misc. I usually admire Abraham Riesman’s writing on comics for Vulture, and it’s very possible (even probably) that he didn’t write the headline for this, but “tragic and disappointing” seem like astonishingly hyperbolic words to connect to Marvel’s cancellation of The Fantastic Four.

This massive 31-book Osamu Tezuka Kickstarter is a little nuts, and apparently aimed at manga fans with very deep pockets. (If I’m reading it right, you have to kick in 150 bucks before you even get a single book!)

Today on the site, since you’ve been good, here is Ryan Holmberrg uncovering YET ANOTHER hidden facet of manga history: komaga.

Without komaga (literally “panel pictures”), there would have been no gekiga. Moreover, because by the mid 60s gekiga had become lingua franca in comics for adolescent boys and young men, and because without gekiga it is unlikely that the “cinematic” would have become the obsession that it did amongst manga critics and historians, one could also say that without komaga neither manga or its discourse would exist as we know them.

Despite this, komaga’s creator, Matsumoto Masahiko (1934-2005) has only recently been resurrected from the archive. Yet still has his work barely registered within the mainstream of manga scholarship, which remains stubbornly Tezuka-centric in focus.

Murder mysteries are defined by their central, structuring absences. A hole occupies the space where a life once lived. That hole can never be filled. But through an investigation of the facts, an uncovering of the truth, and a pursuit and capture of the killer, we can define and discover the shape of the hole to a degree of accuracy sufficient to put a cover on it, so that the still-living may proceed past it once more.

Gast, a graphic novel of exquisite and accomplished empathy and restraint by alternative-comics veteran Carol Swain, tells a story centered on a hole far harder to close up than most. It proceeds with the methods and mechanics of investigation and discovery. The scene of the crime is visited. The victim’s routine is examined. The friends and acquaintances of victim and suspect alike are questioned. Evidence is recovered and cataloged: a discarded make-up bag, a shell casing, a stain on the bedroom wall. Means, motive, and opportunity are all established.

Book publishing department: I like the look of these cover designs. It’s nice to see more innovative approaches to repackaged classics. Penguin, of course, also had a great series of cartoonist-illustrated covers.

I almost forgot that Ed Piskor’s wonderful Hip Hop Family Tree is still being serialized! Here’s the latest. Not only that, but all-time great cartoonist Ben Katchor is still serializing his strip in Metropolis, and it’s online, too. It’s fun to read comics!

At times in Root Hog or Die, the new documentary about his life to date, John Porcellino wanders down the streets of his old neighborhoods like he’s casing the houses. In a flannel jacket, raised hoodie, and ever-present Chicago Bears hat, he seems displaced but at peace with himself, a philosophical outsider sifting through his past. The off-handedness of these scenes and the film’s many interviews creates the impression that Root Hog or Die is almost a home movie, which it almost is, and this is a good thing. Disarmed, you forget this is a documentary, you forget the expectations of documentaries about an artist’s life, and you’re defenseless when Porcellino’s life unspools.

Elsewhere:

If you’re in NYC please join me tonight for the What Nerve! book release party. I’ll be talking to Peter Saul and screening Forcefield’s video Tunnel Vision (2001). Peter, along with Leif Goldberg and Jim Drain will also be signing books. 6- 8 pm, tonight, October 21st at the Swiss Institute (18 Wooster St. at Canal). Film screening at 6:30 and talk at 6:45.

Hey, I didn’t know the transcript of that juvenile delinquency hearing in 1954 was online.
Comics-adjacent: A Gerhard Richter profile. I say comics adjacent because in 1962 young Gerhard completed a Steinberg-esque picture story that was only published this year and attributed to “Gerd Richter”. It’s very much in the vein of Steinberg’s books, which were available in German, as well as the work of other influences on German visual culture like Andre Francois, Robert Osborne, and others from a mostly (lately) unmentioned generation of “illustrators”.

This “most powerful in comics” list is wonderfully dated. History can be so cruel!

Most of the lianhuanhua that can still be found in China were printed in the late 1970s and 1980s during the last heyday of pulp comic publishing, but their history reaches back much farther. The lianhuanhua industry began in Shanghai during the 1920s and 30s, though some scholars trace the origins of the format to Song Dynasty scrolls. Using newly imported printing techniques, publishers began releasing periodicals that contained stories and illustrations. They called these works “lianhuanhua” (linked images), though there were various regional names. Some of these stories were text accompanied by images while others used speech bubbles or text inserted into the image. The most popular series from the magazines were reprinted in palm-size paperbacks, and before long rental shops sprung up in alleyways throughout the city. For a few coins, patrons could sit down on wooden stools and read several dozen lianhuanhua.

When the Great Depression put cartoonists’ jobs on the block, Jimmy Swinnerton, a friend to William Randolph Hearst who had the Chief’s ear, lobbied for his colleagues. Occasionally, he was successful. In November, 1930, Swinnerton reminded Hearst that Jimmy Hatlo, creator of the panel They’ll Do It Every Time, was a “big shot on the paper and might have his financial rash cured by some salve but not too much.” Swinnerton’s plea worked; Hatlo received a raise and kept drawing his popular comic for Hearst’s King Features.

Yet even Swinnerton was unable to help his young protege, a Los Angeles Herald cartoonist named Austin “Pete” Peterson. Swinnerton and Peterson were close; Peterson had even dated Swinnerton’s daughter, until the girl threw him over for a college boy. Swinnerton once had stepped in to help Peterson find work with Hearst, and in November, 1930, he stepped in again to help Peterson keep his job on the Los Angeles Herald’s sports page.

Well, I’m back from the Frankfurt Book Fair. One whole week. I saw some comics, but not as many as I would’ve liked. More on that soon. With DAP I was in the art book section, so a little removed from the comics sections. Anyhow, on to the post. Today we have an interview with Ryan Cecil Smith by George Elkind.

George Elkind: S.F. #3 come out not so long ago from Koyama Press. That’s your first work with a publisher aside from anthologies, right?

Ryan Cecil Smith: Yeah, that’s right.

I can tell from the production work you put in [via design, printing, etc] that self-publishing seems to be its own sort of passion for you, even aside from the cartooning element.

Yeah, I think so—sometimes I think that I should only care about the story and I should only care about the [narrative] content of a book, but from where I come from [Ryan studied printmaking at the Maryland Institute College of Art] they’re wrapped up in each other. You know, the production and the cover and the way you come into a book and the way everything is presented… to me that’s all wrapped up in your experience of it. So, yeah, it’s hard for me to separate the production from the [narrative] content. Usually when I make a thing—I mean, this could change, but usually I have a real clear picture of how I want it to appear to the reader.

So in the case of the self-published books… since I’ve lived in Japan, I haven’t had access to really nice screen-printing equipment, like I had while I was in college. And man, if I had that now? Especially since as a student you can get into the studio for free and use all their stuff? Of course you’re paying for it, but that’s still really nice. But since I’ve been in Japan, I guess I’ve relied on “printo-gocco” or “Gocco Printer?” The homemade screen-printing kit. And that’s how I used to print my covers to my books. But it’s hard, it’s very time-consuming, and it’s not even that high-quality of a print. So I stopped doing that and I just used Risograph printing. Risograph machines are very common here. And I mean, or I guess… I just think about how it’s gonna get printed when I make the book. And I like the effect that a Risograph gives. But at the same time, when you’re dealing with Risograph you are kind of dealing with knowing the quality level that it’s gonna give you—and it’s nice knowing, with this last one [with SF#3], that the print is gonna be smooth and of good quality, and also that I can add a flourish or two—and that it’s gonna look like a real book.

And more speculation here — a look at the incredible price appreciation of one Christopher Wool painting. There’s some kind of relationship to comic book pricing here, but only barely. Mostly it’s just interesting.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:
—Interviews. Hillary Brown in Paste has a nice, strong interview with series editor Bill Kartalopoulos about the process of putting together this year’s Best American Comics anthology.

—Misc. Katy Waldman at Slate has a long piece on comics and the portrayal of mental illness. It’s aimed more at casual comics readers than serious enthusiasts, but quotes people like scholar David Ball and Ellen Forney, and is generally fairly interesting. It also includes what I’d call an intellectually indefensible argument from an academic named William Kuskin: “You can’t separate graphic novels from their superhero roots. That origin story—the broken protagonist who transforms himself—is the true meaning of the genre.” Maybe his words were taken out of context or his meaning was in some way distorted, but otherwise, that represents some marked theoretical confusion.

I missed the recent Eleanor Davis drawing marathon to raise funds for a young man’s wheelchair van, but it’s not too late to help out. Robot 6 has more.